EVO Minecraft MOOC Week 3: Networking #evomc16

This MOOC has been a great place to find like-minded educators using Minecraft. Other groups I’m part of include two other communities on Google+: Minecraft in Education and MinecraftEdu, as well as Bron Stuckey’s community, The Minecraft Experience (http://www.minecraftexperience.net/). My favorite Minecraft community, though, is my friends and colleagues on the VSTE Minecraft server.

The Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE), an affiliate of ISTE, has been exploring virtual worlds since 2008 (http://www.vste.org/index/SL.html), when it opened VSTE Island in Second Life. I’ve been active with VSTE in virtual worlds since 2012, and have found its members to be among the most active education professionals around. VSTE maintains a Minecraft vanilla server in Creative mode for teachers who want to learn to play.

I hosted a tour of the server for the EVO Minecraft MOOC last Sunday, Feb. 7. It was fun to introduce some more teachers to the server, and show off some of our builds. We especially enjoyed DrNosall’s new underground roller coaster, MrZwaaa’s redstone displays, and MrsGielen’s Winter Castle.

Educators need to be approved and whitelisted for this server before entering it. Once approved, they are welcome to come in any time and play. We are a community of learners, respecting and sharing each other’s builds and ideas.